Would you pay to see a movie with less than three out of five stars? What about restaurants – would you go eat somewhere rated 3 out of 5 stars when you have so many other choices? With Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and every single source of sentiment your heart can desire, you no longer need to stomach subpar experiences.

Your collaborative spaces – especially your office environment – should be no different. But trying to find good ratings for writeable wall-paint is like trying to find good Mexican food north of Texas (all the more reason to visit us once in a while) – it’s darn near impossible.

Typical commentary for the elusive ‘whiteboard paint’ includes (actual comments from the interweb):

“Too expensive.”
“I got an arm workout trying to get EXPO markers off of it.”
“Requires an air supplied respirator to avoid inhaling dangerous isocyanates in the activator of the polyurethane product” (why so dangerous?)
“Takes a long time to dry…like two weeks”
“You get what you pay for”
“Does not work”
“Will be calling for a refund”
“Does not erase cleanly”
“Very difficult to apply”

And that’s not to say that in some light-use settings, with perfectly flat walls, and really good, professional coatings professionals to apply the product, paint as a writing surface aren’t ok. They’re just not suitable in architecturally inspired spaces, where moderate use is a must, or where you must write, erase and expect a clean surface.

Here’s another challenge – you need an empty wall. It’s harder to find than you’d think. If your office space is on the archaic side of the spectrum, chances are it’s well populated with corporate assets (clutter) and if you’re office space is new, inspired by today’s best practices in design, well you built a beautiful environment with the best in non-writeable materials and they don’t deserve dry erase markers. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to write on walls.

If whiteboard paint were a logical choice, so too would be wall projectors. Anyone who opts for the paint, should also throw out their TV – a projector on the wall is better right? It’s a bigger image! Unfortunately, it turns out that the wall’s part time job of being a wall, any ‘light’ that might compromise that wall, foot traffic in front of the wall, and the wall’s specks and bumps make it a lousy surface for a television. It’s even worse as a whiteboard.

Clarus™ makes collaborative illustrative glass surfaces in any color you can imagine, with not one of the headaches seen with wall paint. The surface is smooth. It’s the difference between driving on a rocky dirt road and a freshly paved super-highway. It’s thick enough to withstand hurled bricks. And it frames the brilliance of your thoughts, ideas, and illustrations in a beautiful way. Just as a stunning flat-screen TV is the focal point of many living spaces, the Clarus glassboard captures attention and HD focus in the office.

The Clarus commitment to superior manufacturing isn’t easy. It requires shockingly clear glass. It requires the perfect thickness of tempered glass. It requires paint that bonds perfectly with the glass so that it doesn’t come off – ever. But it easily beats paint as an illustrative and writing surface.

But don’t just take it from us! Check out this video case study in which Matt Redden, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing for DealerSocket talks about his switch to Clarus from paint. As Sherwin Williams says, paint ‘Covers the Earth’ – and we’re big fans for all applications but one – it just makes a lousy writing surface.